Alliance Stellar Craft
Ships Ships are large vessels capable of making warp. They typically are covered in thick armored grav plates with high albedos and are propelled by fusion drives. Not able to achieve any measure of stealth they have active sensor suites, large radiator fins, and Propulsion Section Ships are classified by their engines, which provide both thrust and electrical power from fusion reactors. Class A engines are the smallest while class D are the largest in current mass production. Going from one class to the next represents a doubling in length which also correlates to roughly eight times as much mass as the previous ship class. Should a ship have multiple engines, it will receive several letters for example a CC (pronounced “double-C”) ship or an ABA ship. The larger the engines, the more power the ship has to use. Propulsion sections are built separately from the forward sections and are designed to be interchangeable. The high heat, neutron embrittlement, and radiation of the engine section makes it unsuitable for human habitation. Should something need repairing, telemetry-operated drones are used for this purpose. Forward Section The forward section of the ship houses the crew and the more sensitive technology. Lighter forward sections mean a faster ship while heavier ones mean a slower ship but room for more crew, marines, boat bays, and machinery. The forward section also determines the function of the ship. There are hundreds of functions, but the most common follow: Picket These are usually class A ships with improved sensor array and occasionally a single boat bay. They’re used to scout areas or coordinate with point defense. Picket ships no longer fit for active duty are usually sent to handle patrol and policing matters. Dropship These are invariably class A ships with large marine complements designed to enter a planet’s atmosphere and deposit a company of marines, usually while hovering overhead to provide tactical support. In peacetime, dropships are often used to handle counter-terrorist and counter-rebellion operations on system planets. Consideration is being made for class D dropships that act as local bases, but the tactical advantages of such a ship appear limited for the time being. Sweeper These vessels usually take point in the initial stages of a battle and use their strong sensor arrays combined with a multitude of sweeper lasers to handle incoming boats. They’re larger and slower than most other ships, depending on the push from the grav. shields of those behind them to keep them accelerating. Sweepers also tend to be handy in planetary bombardment, using their laser arrays to suppress trouble zones. Hunter Hunter-killer ships usually feature a spinal railgun and are designed to close with and destroy larger ships. They usually sport heavy grav. shields but are light on most other functions to save on mass and increase acceleration. Recently, class C hunter ships are being manufactured with no spinal railgun but a multitude of railgun turrets. They force their way into the middle of an enemy fleet and begin tearing it to shreds. Battleship Battleships are outfitted with a variety of armaments and generally have no specific focus. These are usually class D and occasionally class C ships that represent too much of an investment to be pigeon-holed into a very specific role. Carrier These ships feature mostly boat bays and a few laser sweepers as point defense, with railguns as an afterthought for the larger ships. They’re also usually very large for their engine class, with extensive crew compartments and support systems. They usually sit to the bottom of fleet formations, since their main battle objectives are to launch boats, retrieve boats after the battle is completed, and not get blown up in the meantime. Assault carriers host large numbers of torpedoes and fighters while troop carriers have extensive marine complements and shuttles for assaulting planets. Some troop carriers even land on the planet and act as a stationary base. Support Support ships are military ships but are usually not designed primarily for combat and do not take part in battles. They might be transports, fuel tenders, repair or resupply ships, medical vessels, specialist ships, or anything else the fleet may require. They are often civilian vessels pressed into military service, and many of them are part of the merchant marine, returning to civilian use during peacetime. Boats Boats are classified as any vessel too small to be able to make warp. They are stored, maintained, and launched from boat bays aboard warp-capable ships, planets, orr space stations. Boats are typically designed for short-range missions. They depend on ships to house, repair, and resupply them as well as for their initial launch velocity which allows them to conserve energy. Boat bays also cool stealth vessels to reduce thermal emissions. And boats usually rely on battery power, rather than fusion plants with their easily-detected emissions. Active sensors are also a bane to stealth and are usually not equipped on boats. They use tightbeam lasers for communication, to avoid giving away their position to opponents. However, the stealth coating that covers boats renders them nearly undetectable, making them hard to track with point defense and very difficult to hit with missiles and torpedoes. Rail guns are out of the question unless the fighter is currently docked. Shuttles Military shuttles are transports designed to carry materiel or personnel from one place to another. They usually occupy an entire boat bay. Assault Shuttles These are designed for offensive action in boarding other ships or delivering forces to the ground and then retrieving them later. Transport Shuttles These are lightly armed and armored and are mostly used for ferrying personnel or equipment between the ship and some other allied destination such as a planet or starport. Transports may use fusion plants for long-distance travel. Survey Shuttles The navy is often charged with galactic exploration in peacetime, and pairing survey shuttles with carriers is often the best way to accomplish this. In wartime, survey shuttles are designed to be easily retrofitted for combat purposes. Their active scanning makes them easy targets but they still have some tactical uses if deployed strategically. Survey shuttles are often designed to operate for weeks or even months at a time and usually have crew spaces to allow two to three people to operate in something approaching tolerable conditions. They are also often given fusion engines to let them operate independently. Fighters Fighters are designed to be as small as possible, making the most out of the stealth that is their primary defensive measure. The pilot in a fighter allows for intelligent actions without the delay of light speed communications, a difficulty torpedoes face. Interceptor Fighters Interceptors are usually small with superior acceleration used to take out other boats. They are typically armed with a front-mounted pulse laser though they may occasionally also sport missiles. Striker Fighters Strikers usually are medium-sized craft with missile bays and usually a pulse laser. They are used to assault smaller enemy ships as well as deal with other boats and are generally an all-around useful fighter. Bomber Fighters Bomber interceptors feature extensive missile bays and/or spinal mounted rail guns and their focus is on assaulting enemy ships. They tend to be the largest fighters. Planetary Fighters are divided into planetary fighters which specialize in atmospheric operations and stellar fighters which focus on space combat. However, most people assume fighters are stellar unless told otherwise, and so usually only planetary fighters are specified. These craft are used primarily for transorbital warfare. Gunboats The lines between gunboats and Fighters is a vague one but where fighters are designed to be as small as possible gunboats are larger and support a greater array of technology and weapons. Gunboats are known that sport thicker armor more powerful weapons deeper missile bays, and sometimes even grav shields. However this comes at a cost of greater size and therefore fewer gunboats per bay and more importantly lessened stealth capacity. For these reasons gunboats are not commonly used in modern warfare do they still have their places. Coordinator Gunboats These gunboats are launched alongside fighter and missile swarms to provide an advance command location to coordinate the various boats that are in range. Defender Gunboats These gunboats hang back in a defensive formation around a ship, advancing to take on enemy craft. They equip mag cannons to project devastating debris into oncoming boats. They tend to deploy sensor drones to feed them information without giving away as much of their position. Hanging back from the action helps protect them given their lessened stealth. Planetary Gunboats Planetary gunboats fulfill the roles that were typically taken by old-world helicopters or tanks, often flying low to the ground to quickly strike enemy positions and provide cover or air support wherever needed. Torpedoes While fighters are capable of launching missiles, ships launch torpedoes. The difference is that torpedoes are the size of fighters, capable of much longer range and much more damage. Whether torpedoes are considered a type of boat depends on who you’re asking, but they’re launched from boat bays the way any boat would be. X-Ray Laser Torpedoes Usually simply referred to as “X torpedoes” or simply as “torpedoes,” these are built much like fighters. The main exception is that in place of a pilot, the torpedo has a fission warhead whose electromagnetic radiation is used to power a laser. X torpeodoes are the primary torpedo of the alliance. Decoy Torpedoes Decoy torpedoes are designed to resemble multiple salvos of boats while interfering with enemy sensors, all to protect nearby torpedoes and fighters by diverting enemy point defense. Fusion Torpedoes These are one of the earliest stellar torpedoes and consist of a fusion engine that diverts the plasma stream to steer. Upon impact with the target, it uses up the remaining fuel in a thermonuclear explosion. A single direct hit from a fusion torpedo is usually enough to destroy or cripple even the largest ships. However, as point defense became sophisticated enough to easily track and destroy them, they became increasingly less useful, especially given their reliance on contact hits. Even with zero stealth capability, they still find niche use due to their unmatched acceleration and power. A few salvos at close enough range can possibly overwhelm point defense to land a single hit, and that hit can do more damage than a thousand X-torpedoes. Ceramic Torpedoes These are made of heat-resistant ceramic composites and are designed to be dropped from orbit onto a planet and use minimal guidance. Such torpedoes are cheap and easy to deploy en masse, making for excellent planetary bombardment. Advances in lasers are rendering ceramic torpedoes less useful, but they are still cheap to manufacture and easy to deploy. Flash Torpedoes These are simple nuclear bombs to be detonated in the middle of where an enemy boat wing is theorized to be. Once they detonate, they release massive amounts of radiation that can be used to detect any stealthy objects that might be in range. The use of flash torpedoes is fast becoming the primary countermeasure to stealthy boats.